The Internet was originally conceived as a distribution network, and in the past six years, has become widely available to businesses and consumers. The more recent availability of inexpensive broadband access has ushered in a new wave of data sharing. This data sharing has created significant issues that arise due to the digital nature of Internet data—the ones and zeros that represent text, music and video on the Internet are much easier to access and modify than their physical counterparts. Two problems this causes are that privacy can be compromised, and content can be illegally duplicated (or “pirated”).
Prior art has attempted to eliminate privacy and piracy issues, with limited success. The most basic means by which to protect data has been encryption—the sender modifies data in such a way that it is unintelligible to all but the intended recipient. This has meant reliance on relatively slow algorithms for processing the data to be encrypted and unencrypted. Recent prior art has dramatically reduced the computing power required to encrypt data. However, while encryption is necessary to maintain data security, it is useless if the data's security can be compromised once it has been unencrypted.
Other prior art has been developed to augment the security offered by encryption systems. Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems use various forms of encryption to allow rights holders, such as content owners, a way to persistently protect data. Prior art DRM systems offer unique means of deployment—for example, a DRM system can modify a file so that it can only be accessed once without an encrypted key. If an individual attempts to access the file again, the DRM system will disallow access until the individual has the correct key. This is just one example of how DRM can be deployed. Although prior art DRM solutions have been commercially available for some time, they have received limited acceptance because of the usability barriers they introduce. From a content-owner's perspective, these systems call for the time-consuming and costly process of modifying all of his or her data to comply with the system's rules. The content-owner faces this process every time he or she wishes to add more data to be protected. Consumers face even greater barriers—because of the rules introduced by DRM systems, a user may have to change his or her usage habits. For example, an MP3 listener may be required to switch his or her preferred playback program.
The deployment issues facing those using the Internet to share information are not exclusively inherent in Digital Rights Management systems. Companies may want to modify data in any number of ways attaching liner notes to digital music, linking a patient's record to a medical database, including version information on a book passed between an author and his editor—these are all examples of processes that add extra time and cost to file delivery on the back-end, and compatibility issues on the front end. As more entities connect more devices to the Internet at higher data transmission rates, cost and compatibility problems will only increase. The benefits gained from increased Internet connectivity will ultimately offset the losses. However, the increase in data flowing across both wired and wireless networks introduce further issues regarding speed, prioritization, and Quality of Service (QoS).
More now in wireless networks than in their wired counterparts, bandwidth is a precious commodity. Prior art has developed systems such as, but not limited to, Wideband Code Division Multiple Access and Global Packet Radio Service, that will fill wireless radio frequencies with circuit-switched and packet data in the most optimal way possible for the given spectrum. However, the bandwidth that will be available in Third Generation cellular networks will still not match that in wired networks. Additionally, applications developers face the challenge of not knowing the available bandwidth of their end-users, as it changes based on location, speed and several other variables. Both the wired and wireless world will face increased traffic and network congestion, as more applications are developed to push the limits of available bandwidth.
Beyond Internet applications, many enterprises also face issues with securing files available on or via their enterprise network. As a result, most enterprises) today have deployed sophisticated network security products to protect their information from external threats. Technologies such as firewalls, intrusion detection and user authentication have gained an almost universal acceptance in the marketplace. At the same time, enterprises are also adopting a strong centralized file storage strategies that are built upon network storage devices.
While prior art perimeter and access technologies like firewalls and user authentication do an excellent job of keeping malicious users out of networks, they do little to address other threats. Another threat exists within users who have authorized access to the network. Through network storage devices, authorized users have direct access to sensitive enterprise information.
Even with the majority of enterprise information currently being stored on network storage devices, security has not been a driving force in their design. As a result, these devices have largely implemented simple and inadequate permissions such as read-only and read/write. This simplistic approach has lead to accidental and malicious exposure of enterprise sensitive data to unauthorized parties.